


In Absentia

by watanuki_sama



Series: Steeped In Sin [18]
Category: Common Law (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Fic, Abandonment Issues, Demon!Wes AU, Exorcisms, Gen, M/M, Some Swearing, Travis has issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22343530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: Sometimes absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it just hurts. Or, five times Wes was exorcised and Travis had to wait for him to return, and one time he realized Wes was never leaving.
Relationships: Travis Marks & Wes Mitchell, Travis Marks/Wes Mitchell
Series: Steeped In Sin [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/78397
Comments: 12
Kudos: 104





	In Absentia

**Author's Note:**

> Because Wes gets exorcised in this ‘verse way too much for there not to be a 5+1 fic about it, lmao.
> 
> Also posted in FF.net under the penname 'EFAW' on 01.20.20.

_“Absence makes the heart go fucking insane.”_   
_—Quote from Pinterest_

\---

1\. 

\---

Ice cold water splashes into Travis’s face, sending him sputtering upright into sobriety. He bats at the spray, fumbling for the tap, and by the time he has the water turned off he feels like a goddamn penguin.

Pretty sure he didn’t crawl into the tub fully clothed and turn the water onto Arctic Chill, he scowls around the bathroom, wiping his eyes. “What the _fuck_ , man? I thought you were my friend.”

Paekman crosses his arms, eyebrows going up disapprovingly. “I am your friend. Which is why I’m here. Now, can you shower by yourself, or do I need to help? Because I will.” Somehow, he manages to make that last bit sound like a threat.

“Fuck you,” Travis grumbles, struggling to his feet. Okay, so the water didn’t _completely_ sober him up—he’s still a little wobbly on his feet. But he’s coherent enough.

“I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll be right outside, holler if you need me.” Paekman closes the door behind him, and Travis starts stripping out of his wet clothes, cursing his so-called friend with everything he’s got. By the time he steps out of the bathroom, clean and dry, he’s run out of mundane curses and had to get more creative, but he does feel marginally better.

“You’re the used bubblegum under a middle-schooler’s desk,” he announces as he emerges in dry, clean clothes.

“That was pathetic,” Paekman retorts, turning from the stove. “Come here and eat.” He pours a couple scrambled eggs onto a plate and moves to the fridge.

The scene is achingly familiar, the words sharp and full of affection, and it makes Travis’s chest go tight and his throat close up and he has to blink a few times, because maybe then the right person would be standing there scowling at him impatiently but it’s _not_ , he’s< _not_ and Travis is—

Travis takes a shaky breath and sits down. He eats a few listless bites; then his appetite kicks in, reminding him that he hasn’t really had anything substantial in days, and he starts eating with more vigor.

“What are you doing here?” he mumbles around a mouthful of eggs and toast.

“This is the fifth time I’ve been here in three days,” Paekman says dismissively, cracking another two eggs into the skillet and pointedly ignoring Travis choking on his food. “Though considering the number of bottles I’ve picked up, I’m not surprised you don’t remember that.”

Now that he looks around, there is a lack of mess usually associated with a three-day binge. Travis feels a little guilty. He shovels another bite into his mouth.

Paekman sighs, shoulders dropping, anger leeching out of his voice. “I’m worried about you, Trav. I know this must be difficult—”

Travis sets his fork down with a click. “Don’t.” His voice is sharper than he intends, sharp enough to cut.

Paekman turns, and he doesn’t stop. “He was your partner, Trav. I can imagine how hard this is for you—”

“No you _can’t._ ” Travis shoves to his feet, bracing his hands on the table. “You have _no idea.”_

His voice cracks alarmingly, and Paekman’s eyes go wide. “Travis…”

“He _left,_ Paekman!” Travis shouts. His voice is more tremulous than he’d like; after three days he doesn’t have the control to stop it. “He _left me!_ He was the one person in the world who would never leave me because he’s so goddamn possessive and also fucking _immortal_ , and he _left!”_

When he closes his eyes, he can still see it: the empty warehouse, dark except for one single spot in the center of the massive room, lit only by a bare-bulb floor lamp; the neat, painted lines on the floor, methodical and familiar, done with obvious care; the chair in the center of the devil’s trap, a still figure bound hand and foot, chin against his chest, that normally ruler-straight spine oddly slumped.

Travis had thought Wes was playing, at first. That he was just pissed it took this long to find him, that he didn’t get there with the team in time to catch the bastards that did this, and he was drawing it out as punishment. He could be petty like that. But he’d darted right to the chair as one of the tac team broke the trap, and still Wes’s head hadn’t come up, still he’d just sat there, and then Travis had cut the ropes and he’d never say Wes was warm but he wasn’t always so _cold_ , and then Wes—then _the body_ had tumbled into his arms and—

Things went a little grey after that. He was kind of grateful for that.

“He left me, Paekman,” Travis says brokenly, falling into his chair. He stares at the plate in front of him, gaze a thousand miles away.

He can still see it, in excruciating, painful detail. He’s spent the past three blissful days in an alcohol-induced stupor trying to forget, but every time he blinks the scene plays in his head again, and again, and again—

Wes was possessive, and obsessive, and had chosen Travis has his favoritest human in the whole world, which meant he never left Travis alone, and now…now he’s gone.

Paekman pulls him into a fierce embrace, clutching him a little too tightly. “He didn’t leave you, Trav,” he says, voice thick. “He was taken from you. There’s a difference.”

Travis leans into his friend’s hold and says dully, “No there isn’t.”

\---

The offices look exactly the same. They shouldn’t; somehow Travis feels like there should be a pall over everything, shadows and dim lighting matching his mood. But it’s not. Still the same bright fluorescent lights, still the same bustling detectives, bent over their desks or moving from one end of the room to the other.

Their desks— _his_ desk—are right in the middle of the room. The sight of Wes’s empty chair hits him harder than he thought it would. Travis has to take a few deep breaths before he can bring himself to push open the doors.

Every voice instantly goes silent. Travis lifts his chin and strides across the floor without meeting anyone’s gaze. He can feel the weight of their sympathy on his skin—sympathy, and also relief, because it wasn’t _their_ partner, it isn’t _them_ walking to the captain’s office.

He knows he’d be feeling the exact same way if his position were switched with anyone else, but he can’t help hating them for that anyway.

The captain rises to his feet as Travis enters the room, face soft and gentle. “Travis, I’m so sorry.” 

Travis pulls the door shut behind him and falls into the open chair. “What’d you call me in for? And don’t tell me it’s about Wes, I don’t want to talk about Wes.”

Captain Sutton settles slowly into his own chair, face going through a complicated series of emotions before settling on regretful resignation. “We need to talk about Wes.”

“Fuck,” Travis mutters.

The captain ignores that. He folds his hands in front of him and doesn’t quite meet Travis’s eyes. “We need to talk about…about what to do.”

“Do.”

“With the body.”

“Fuck,” Travis says once more with feeling, and pulls out a flask.

“Travis…”

“I’m on leave, Cap, I can fucking drink if I want to. And I refuse to be sober for this.” Paekman is driving him home, he’d insisted on it, so Travis takes a long swallow. 

Sutton looks down. “It’s been a week, Travis. We can’t just…keep him here forever.” He waits. Travis takes another pull.

With a sigh, the captain reluctantly asks, “Did Wes ever…talk to you? About what he’d want…done if…if something happened?”

The laugh Travis makes is bitter and cold. “No, Cap, we never talked about how to dispose of his body if he ever got grabbed by hunters and _exorcised_. Never really came up in conversation. Sorry.” The liquor burns going down, but it goes down easy, and if he drinks enough, then even this won’t hurt. That’s all he’s going for now. “Toss it, bury it, burn it for all I care. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just a shell.”

Just a meat suit, as Wes would say, in that slightly befuddled way he’d get whenever Travis worried over him getting shot again. _It’s just a meat suit, Travis, it can’t hurt me,_ because he could never understand how terrifying it was to see someone you cared about getting injured, and Travis knew intellectually that Wes couldn’t be hurt but that didn’t mean he _felt_ it.

And anyway, it turns out he was wrong about that. Wes _could_ be hurt. He could be hurt and taken and stolen away.

If even that immutable fact was broken, then nothing else matters at all.

“Anything else?” he asks. When the captain shakes his head, Travis pushes himself to his feet, feeling like he’s gained a thousand pounds in the past few days. Everything feels so _heavy_. “Then I’m gonna go back to my leave.”

“Travis,” the captain says softly, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He sounds sincere, sincerer than anyone else has. Travis pauses, hand on the doorknob, and he doesn’t dare look back in case the captain sees the sudden tears in his eyes. He can’t take whatever zen therapy crap the captain might try to pull if he saw Travis was about to cry.

“Forget what I said, Cap,” he says hoarsely. “Don’t burn him. He’s had enough fire.”

He ducks out the door before the captain can say anything else.

He’s stepping onto the elevator when Sutton comes rushing out into the hall. “Marks!” he calls, and there’s something in his voice, frantic and urgent but—oddly—buoyant that makes Travis stick his arm in the door and wait.

“Marks,” the captain pants, skidding to a halt before the elevators. “That was the morgue. Jonelle says—she says he’s back.”

Travis’s heart damn near stops. “What?”

“He’s back.” Captain Sutton puts his hands on his knees, a grin threatening to explode on his face. “Wes is back.”

Travis doesn’t remember much of the trip to the morgue, just that he barely stops long enough for the elevator to disgorge him on the right floor, and he goes careening around a few corners. He can barely believe it, not even when he’s standing, panting, in the doorway, staring at the table in the center of the room. There’s Jonelle, in her white coat and scrubs, looking oddly excited as she peppers questions at—

Wes, sitting there in a set of blue scrubs, looking a little bored and a lot annoyed. His feet are bare, and his hair is rumpled, but it’s _him_ , spine ruler-straight and lips drawn into a thin little line. It’s _him_.

As though sensing Travis’s gaze, Wes glances up, and briefly, his eyes go black, _flicker-flash_. And then he asks, cool as a cucumber, “Do you have my clothes?”

Travis crosses the room in three big strides, throwing his arms around Wes’s neck. Wes goes stiff, startled, and he vaguely hears Jonelle mutter something about being needed in the back room, but he ignores all of it, just buries his face in Wes’s neck and clutches him tight.

“Don’t do that to me,” he chokes, “don’t you _ever_ fucking do that to me _again_ , you bastard,” and all of a sudden all those tears he’d been holding in, _seven days_ worth of tears comes spilling out.

The demon’s arms awkwardly wrap around him as he sobs into Wes’s shoulder, and Travis clings tight like he’s never going to let go.

\---

2\. 

\---

Exorcisms never get any easier.

Travis has gotten better about dealing with them, at least on the outside. He’s stopped going on blackout drinking binges when one happens, he’s working on not flying into a rage at the slightest provocation, and he’s (mostly) stopped panicking that Wes is never going to come back and he’ll be left all alone forever. For the most part. Out loud, at least.

Alright, so Travis hasn’t _really_ gotten better about Wes being sent packing to Hell for days at a time, but he’s gotten a damn sight better about _pretending_ he’s okay, which is practically the same thing.

He would feel a better about it all if Wes didn’t keep _disappearing_ when he was exorcised. When Wes—or his body, at least—is downstairs in the morgue, Travis can open the drawer and reassure himself that Wes will return, because Wes is a possessive bastard who likes his comforts, such as a body he’s worn for years and knows all the ins and outs of.

But the damned rogue hunters who think any demon is fair game, registered law-abiding citizens or not, keep taking Wes to random, out of the way places and exorcising him and then it’s a waiting game, waiting for whatever local cops to find the body and report it, then for the proper people to be alerted so Wes’s body can be collected in time for Wes’s return…

The waiting is the worst part. He can deal with the rest of it—the terrified rage, the urgent panic threatening to break through his chest, even being stuck on a desk for a week until his partner is back. But the waiting…he hasn’t gotten used to that. He’s not sure he ever will.

“And you wonder why I keep eating in your car,” Travis mumbles sourly to his partner’s empty desk. “It’s payback for all this grief you cause me, you bastard.”

Travis can almost picture Wes’s annoyed glower. It makes him feel marginally better for about three seconds.

He thinks what he hates most about the waiting is that it gives him too much time to _think_. Travis has never been much a thinker, preferring to act instead. Thinking leads to the kinds of ideas and revelations that he doesn’t want to dwell on, so it’s better to just avoid all of that.

Like wondering if _this_ is the time that Wes doesn’t come back, and Travis is really all alone, and he _knows_ he’s never going to find another person who’s as obsessively possessive about him as Wes is so what does that mean for his future, and why does that make his heart start skipping in his chest—

“Marks!” Captain Sutton pokes his head out of his office. “We got a call about our boy.”

Travis drops his head. “Oh, thank god.”

\---

Travis has never heard of West Bishop, California, population two-thousand-and-some. Luckily for him, Google Maps has, so he plugs the address in and in less than twenty minutes he’s on his way. He’s got a couple bottles of water and some snacks for the drive, plus one of Wes’s suits, because who knows what condition the one he was abducted is in. There are a lot of things Travis will put up with upon Wes’s sort-of return from the dead, but bitching about his clothing is too much.

Two hours into the four hour drive, he gets a call from the captain. He listens to the report, then mutters a succinct, but heartfelt, “Well, fuck.”

“That about sums up my feelings too, Marks,” the captain says.

As soon as he hangs up, Travis steps on the gas.

The scene outside the West Bishop police station is one of barely-controlled panic. Travis parks Wes’s Chrysler as close to the building as he can, then hoofs it the last fifty yards, pushing through crowds of looky-loos. That’s the one constant about people—whenever there is something happening, there will always be people clustering, craning their necks to get a better glimpse.

He grimaces as an old lady jabs her ridiculously sharp elbow into his ribs when he ducks past the barricade. A jumpy deputy stops him; Travis pulls out his badge and gestures towards at the sheriff. The deputy studies his picture, nods once, and waves him past. Travis takes a breath and heads over.

The sheriff does the same badge-picture scrutiny the deputy did, handing it back with a frown. “So you’re the guy from LA,” he says, which isn’t really a question.

Travis tucks his badge back in his pocket. “What’s going on here?”

The sheriff nods towards the building. “We were prepping the body of your partner—condolences, by the way—for transport, when it suddenly sat up and started talking. Eyes were completely black.” The sheriff pulls on the brim of his hat. “We’re a small town. We don’t really have a protocol for dealing with demons. So we trapped it in a cell and evacuated the building. Knew you were coming, so we were hoping you’d have more of an idea what to do, being from the city and all.”

Travis’s mind spins frantically, trying to come up with a split-second plan that _won’t_ involve exorcising his partner in order to get him out of West Bishop. Wes would never let him live it down. 

Luckily, Travis is remarkably good at coming up with split-second bullshit plans.

“You’re right, sheriff,” he says. “I do know how to deal with demons. There are…so many in LA. Demons on every street corner.” Playing to stereotypes, sure, but if it gets him and Wes out of here in one piece, he’ll do what he has to. “You’d better let me go in alone.”

“Let me send someone in with you—” the sheriff starts to offer.

Travis cuts him off. “Do you have a pair of these?” He whips out his handcuffs, waving them around so the sheriff can’t realize they’re standard-issue. “Spelled silver, specifically created to restrain a demon’s power. Do you know the ten words to the Song Of Aramiah that will stop a demon in its tracks? How about bullets that will send a demon packing back to Hell?” Travis certainly hopes not, considering he just made all of those up.

(This is the bullshit part of the plan.)

“Well…” The sheriff rubs his hand across his mouth. “No. But I don’t like sending you in alone.”

“You said it yourself, I know how to deal with demons.” Travis claps him on the shoulder. “The best thing you can do is stay out here, keeping the people calm. Oh, and also, if you could bring my car a little closer to the building, that would help too.”

He strides off before the sheriff can protest more, hopping up the steps and closing the front door behind him.

The building is completely empty, and a little eerie in its silence. Travis strolls through nonchalantly, hands in his pockets, whistling a little as he looks for the cells.

There are five cells in the back of the building. The middle one has a dozen crosses, wood, metal, plastic, tied or taped to the bars; it’s the only cell that’s occupied.

Wes looks up as Travis approaches, eyes flashing black, flicker-flash.

“About damn time you got here.”

Travis leans on the door, grinning. “What did I tell you about scaring the locals, babe?”

“Not to.” Wes scowls. “Which is why I’m still in here and not busting out of this Podunk backwater.”

“That’s rude. It’s not LA but this place isn’t _that_ far out.”

“Whatever,” Wes rolls his eyes.

Travis taps one of the crosses questioningly. Wes rolls his eyes again. “Like those would actually keep me contained. It’s kind of adorable that they think this would work. Where are they getting their information?”

“Internet, probably.” Travis grabs the key for the cell, unlocking the door. Wes stands, tugging at his sleeves, the picture of unruffled cool. But his movements are sharp and stiff, showing just how annoyed he is.

He’s not going to like the next part of the plan any better.

“So Wes,” he says companionably, slinging his arm over the demon’s shoulder, “about getting you out of here…”

The Chrysler is parked right in front of the stoop when they exit, Travis leading a handcuffed Wes before him. The crowd goes silent, waiting with baited, hushed breath. Travis has to fight to keep his face solemn and serious; Wes isn’t even bothering to hide his scowl or ink-black eyes.

In dead silence, Travis opens the back door and shoves Wes in the car. Wes glares at him, promising retribution as soon as they’re out of this town. Travis bites the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything snappy.

Shutting the door on Wes, Travis turns to the sheriff. “Thank you for your cooperation in this matter,” he says, as grandly as he can. “Who knows what kind of chaos he might have caused, if it hadn’t been for your quick thinking.”

The sheriff eyes Wes in the backseat. “What’re you gonna do with it?”

“Don’t you worry about that.” Travis smiles reassuringly. “We’ll take care of him.”

He nods one more time to the sheriff and his deputies, then climbs into the car and starts the engine. The civilians pull back, leaving a wide-open path for him to drive through. He can feel Wes’s glare scorching the back of his head as he navigates the path and pulls onto Main Street.

He makes it to the city limits before he starts laughing, and Wes’s scowl just makes him laugh that much harder.

\---

3\. 

\---

The club is full of strobing lights and thumping music and young bodies writhing on the dance floor. Travis has spent many a Friday and Saturday night in clubs just like this one, looking for someone to spend the night with.

He’s not really in the mood tonight, but he takes a moment to soak up the ambiance like a flower absorbing sunlight. It’s been much too long since he’s been in a club like this—he’s found other things to do on his Friday and Saturday nights.

Besides, it kind of takes the fun out of a one-night stand when he walks in on Monday morning and Wes gives him the stinkeye. Wes _always_ knows, and there’s nothing more annoying than a demon in a jealous snit.

A few people give him appreciative, inviting looks as he makes his way to the bar. Travis smiles politely back—acknowledging their interest, but silently turning them down. He’s not here for that, not tonight.

There’s an empty seat at the bar, and Travis slides in. His elbow bumps the blonde to his left, jostling the man’s drink all over the counter.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry.” Travis grabs a handful of napkins, wiping at the spill.

The blonde gives him a frank once-over—then smiles, a slow, sensual thing Travis can almost feel skating over his skin. “Buy me a drink and I’ll forgive you,” he purrs, low and a little rough around the edges.

It’s remarkably sexy. Travis smiles back. “I think I can do that.”

Travis orders a replacement appletini for the blonde, and whatever’s on tap for himself. The bartender is good—their drinks slide in front of them in just a couple of moments. The blonde takes a sip of his drink and sighs, closing his eyes like it’s the best goddamn thing he’s ever tasted.

Travis takes a small sip of his beer, watching his companion. “So,” he says, “what do you do?”

“Oh, this and that,” the blond says vaguely. “I travel a lot. Just got into town, actually.” He sends Travis a look that conveys just what he’s hoping to accomplish on his first night in town.

Travis smiles, a tiny rise of the corner of his mouth. Not an acceptance of the other man’s interest, certainly—but definitely not a denial, either.

“You travel,” Travis echoes, turning toward the blonde. “Where have you been? What have you seen?”

The blonde grins, mysterious and inscrutable, and says, “Things you’ve never even dreamed of.”

The smile never reaches his eyes.

Travis widens his eyes appreciatively. “That sounds incredible. Tell me about it?”

The blonde does. He talks for twenty minutes, downing cocktail after different cocktail like they’re water, so engrossed in his stories that he never notices that Travis is still nursing his first beer.

Finally, the blonde downs his eighth drink and stacks the glass beside the others, completing two neat rows of four, perfectly aligned despite being in all different kinds of glasses. He wouldn’t let the bartender clear the glasses away. “What do you do?” he asks, with a certain rote stiffness, like he’s reading a script.

Travis shrugs. “This and that,” he says coyly. “I’m not nearly as exciting as you are. Just a local boy who never got out of town.”

The blonde’s eyes light up, grin turning lascivious. “Oh, that just means you know all the good spots around the city.”

Travis toasts an acknowledgement and takes a tiny sip, barely enough to even taste the beer.

“Hey, you wanna get out of here?” he asks, pressing his thigh against the other man’s. “I know this great little spot, nice and private. Just the two of us, all night long.”

The blonde lights up like a frickin’ Christmas tree.

They pay their tabs and walk out, close enough their shoulders brush every other step. In the lot, the blonde leans against the side of the car, watching Travis with frank, proprietary interest. Travis, used to being on the receiving end of possessive, mildly creepy gazes, takes it in stride—he simply smiles and digs the keys out of his pocket.

“You know,” he muses, unlocking the car, “I didn’t get your name.”

The blonde pushes off the car, sleek and dangerous as a puma. “Does it really matter?” he purrs, trailing his fingers across Travis’s shoulders as he heads for the passenger’s side.

Travis smiles, tight and thin, and agrees, “No, I don’t suppose it does.”

They don’t say anything—Travis concentrates on driving, and the blonde watches the scenery zip by the window in mute fascination.

In no time at all, they get to Travis’s warehouse. The blonde climbs out of the car, surveying the trailer in the middle of the wide, open space without comment. Travis locks the car, and gestures grandly toward the silver trailer.

“After you.”

The blonde shoots him a slow, sensuous look and saunters towards the trailer.

Travis knows the instant the blond realizes there’s a problem—he stiffens, whirling around to glare at Travis, handsome face twisted into an ugly snarl. “What the hell is this?”

Travis grins—nothing coy and charming about this expression. This smile is an angry, fierce thing. He walks forward, kicking up the edge of the gaudy rug in front of the trailer, the one he bought just this morning at a flea market, to reveal the painted lines on the concrete.

“This, buddy, is a devil’s trap. And _you_ —” he jabs an angry finger at the blonde in the circle, “are going to get the _hell_ out of my partner.”

The demon wearing Wes’s body flashes black eyes, and hisses at him.

\---

“You’re making a mistake,” the demon says.

Travis ignores him, staring at the paper in his hands.

A week. It’s been a week since Jonelle called to say that Wes’s body had disappeared from the morgue. Travis hadn’t been too worried—Wes had been exorcised enough times now that Travis knew how this would go. He’d come into work and Wes would be sitting at his desk like nothing happened.

Except Wes never came to work. And when Travis checked the hotel, it was obvious Wes had never made it home.

There wasn’t much that could deter a demon. That was when Travis started getting worried.

“Look, this body was _dead_ ,” the demon in the circle says. “That makes it fair game.”

“Dormant, not dead,” Travis corrects, sounding out one of the words on the paper. It’s all Greek to him—or Latin, as the case may be. “Also, it’s almost funny how _wrong_ you are.”

The demon frowns, and it’s weird how _obvious_ it is that this isn’t Wes, even though it’s Wes’s face. Wes never allows himself to look that confused, even when he has no idea what’s going on—Wes doesn’t let himself show that much vulnerability.

This guy has a lot to learn.

“I claimed this body,” the demon tries again. “So it’s _mine.”_

“Wrong.” Travis looks up, gives the demon a saccharine sweet smile. “That body was claimed by another demon who’s been riding around in it for like fifty years, and he really wants it back.”

It’s kind of funny to see Wes’s face blanch like that, even if it’s not Wes inside.

“You don’t have to do this,” the demon says desperately. “You don’t have to send me back.”

“ _Technically,_ you’re right,” Travis agrees, “but if I don’t, my partner’s gonna be in _such_ a mood, and I am so not up to dealing with his shit. Is being petty a demon thing, or just him? I mean, it’s so hard to tell.”

The demon hisses something in a flame-torn rasp, harsh and guttural. Travis can’t understand the words, but he can tell by intonation alone that it’s not very nice.

He click his tongue. “Rude. You should be nicer to the guy who’s about to exorcise your ass.”

Like a switch being flipped, the demon is all sweet pleading. “Pease don’t do this.”

“Too late.” This guy has been running around in his partner’s body for a week. He _stole_ Wes’s body, leaving Travis alone, and Wes may be an asshole but he’d never _abandon_ Travis. Not even _Hell_ can keep him from coming back to Travis’s side. That’s something Travis counts on—he can handle it, every time Wes gets exorcised, so long as he knows Wes will return in the end. And this guy _ruined that_ , stole Wes’s body and sauntered around like he belonged, and Travis had to hunt him down and now Travis is _taking_ Wes’s body back. And if this demon has to get sent back to Hell for that to happen, then too bad, so sad, Travis really doesn’t give a fuck.

Travis can be just as petty as any demon. 

“Okay, I think I got this. _Exorcizamus te…”_

The demon screams, an angry, inhuman shriek, but there’s nothing he can do in the middle of a devil’s trap. Travis stumbles his way through the exorcism, and at the end of it, the blonde’s head snaps back, and the demon bubbles out, a violent cloud of black smoke. It boils in the air for a second, and even though it doesn’t have eyes, Travis can feel the malevolent gaze aimed his way.

Then the demon is sucked down through the floor, and Travis is alone with his partner’s empty body.

Travis sighs. “And now, we wait.” He mutters, and steps into the circle to rearrange Wes’s body so it’s not so…splayed. As an afterthought, he breaks the circle on his way out.

Then he pulls up a lawn chair and settles in to wait.

It’s almost dawn before Travis feels it, a sharp, cold skittering across his skin that makes the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. Travis sits still, watching the dark corners of the warehouse—of which there are many.

A cloud of smoke swirls out of the shadows. It pauses briefly in front of Travis, and Travis smiles. “Hey, baby.”

The smoke pulses, then slithers to the body on the floor.

Wes’s body convulses as the demon enters, and then the last trace of smoke vanishes and Wes’s eyes snap open. He sits up, looking down at himself with a derisive scowl.

“Hey, baby,” Travis calls. Wes glances at him flatly, and for a second Travis has a moment of doubt—he wonders if another stranger came and took control of the dead body lying around, and he’s going to have to go through this rigmarole all over again. He doesn’t have another devil’s trap handy, and it took forever to track the last guy down.

But then Wes scoffs, a reassuringly familiar sound, and says, “Your pronunciation is terrible.”

Travis rolls his eyes. “Hi to you too, asshole. I’m sorry my pronunciation of a _dead language_ wasn’t up to your standards, I’ll work on that next time.”

“You should.” Wes scowls down at himself once more, picking at the tight black t-shirt. “What am I _wearing?”_

“Casual clothes,” Travis quips. “You should try it sometime. There’s an entire world of fashion outside those suits you love so much.”

Another scoff shows Wes’s thoughts on _that_ , and Travis can’t help grinning. _Damn_ , it feels good to have his partner back.

\---

4\. 

\---

It’s been four days since Wes disappeared, kidnapped by _yet another_ random pair of hunters, and Travis is about ready to bounce off the walls. There’s always a waiting period when Wes vanishes, always a few days where Wes has to get back into his body and then find a way to contact Travis—he _knows_ he’s not gonna get a call too quickly. But damn, he’s itching to _do_ something, to _go_ , to fucking get his partner back.

After all this time, he’s still not really good at this whole sitting-around-waiting thing.

Wheeling his chair over to Kate and Amy, Travis plops his elbows on their desks and rests his chin on his hands. “How mad do you think Wes would be if I had Kendall microchip him like a dog?”

“Very,” Amy says without looking up.

Kate taps her pen against her lips. “Don’t those kinds of chips have to be specifically scanned for? You’d be better off with some sort of sub-q GPS transmitter.”

“Ooh, good point. How mad do you think Wes would be if I suggested that?”

“I’m not sure you’d be safe if you were in another state,” Amy says, finally looking up with a wry smile.

Travis thinks about that. “Yeah, that’s probably true. Do you think I could get Kendall to do it without him knowing?”

Amy snorts derisively, which is about the answer Travis expected.

Kate reaches over, puts her hand on his arm. “He’ll come back, Travis. He always comes back.”

Travis stares at her and feels an unexpected lump in his throat. Coughing sharply, he pushes away from the desks, pulling his arm free from her hand in the same motion. “Good talk, girls. Let me know if you have any ideas on the whole microchip thing.” With that, he wheels as quickly back to his desk as he can without looking like he’s running away.

When did he get so damn transparent? 

“Fuck,” he mutters, running his hands through his hair. Kate gives him a sympathetic look from across the room, and somehow that just makes Travis feel worse. Like, god, how pathetic must he look right now? She doesn’t even like Wes. He takes a slow breath, tries to calm himself down. It…doesn’t particularly work.

The helplessness is the worst part of it. His partner is missing and _there’s nothing Travis can do_. There are no leads, no clues to follow, nothing to lead him to Wes. All he can do is sit tight and wait for Wes to contact him.

Travis has never been particularly good at waiting.

The sharp buzz of his phone makes him jump, and he leaps upon the device, which has never been far since Wes vanished, because if Wes needs to contact him Travis has been determined to be there in an instant.

The frantic leap for the phone totally ruins his calm façade, but hell, that hasn’t been effective for days now, so Travis is way beyond worrying about his dignity.

His phone lights up with a text from an unfamiliar number, but there’s a decidedly Wes-like snark to the demanding, _Where the hell are you come get me already_ message, followed by an address.

Just to be certain, Travis texts, _Wes?_

An instant later, his phone buzzes again. _What, are you waiting for an invitation? Yes it’s me, come pick me up!_

Feeling like a weight’s just been lifted off his chest, and grinning so hard he thinks his face might split in half, Travis grabs his jacket and hollers, “Gotta go pick up Wes, Cap, see ya!” He’s out the door before the captain can say a word.

It takes twenty minutes for Travis to drive back to his warehouse and swap out his bike for Wes’s car. It’s another forty-five minutes to get to the address Wes sent him, which is a shabby little truck stop on the side of the highway, the sort that’s half convenience store, half diner. Not normally the kind of place Wes would hang out, but considering he’s been gone for four days, this is probably just the closest place he could find where he could borrow a phone.

With a bounce in his step, Travis turns off the car and heads inside.

It takes a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. There’s half a dozen people in the tiny building, but it only takes Travis about three seconds to realize that none of them are Wes.

He checks the address on his phone again. No, this is the right place. So then where’s Wes?

He clears his throat and asks, hesitantly, “Wes?” as though Wes might be hiding behind the Twinkies or something.

A dark-haired woman, skinny to the point of gauntness and barely out of her teens, swivels around from the bar. “Finally!” she says, sliding off the stool onto five-inch heels. “It’s about damn time. Did you stop to get coffee? I could have walked halfway back to LA already.”

The woman is _completely_ unfamiliar to Travis, he’s never seen her before in his life, but that voice is 100% Wes, all snark and arrogance and just enough fondness to make it alright. Travis opens his mouth.

The woman strides past him, out into the parking lot. “Let’s go, Travis! We haven’t got all day!”

Utterly gobsmacked, Travis can do little more than follow. “Wes?” he asks.

The woman pauses beside the car, looking up at him, and her eyes—her eyes flash black, _flicker-flash_ , and that’s so familiar that Travis feels his shoulders drop in relief. 

“Where are we going?” he asks, unlocking the car and climbing inside. The woman slides into the passenger’s seat, stretching long legs out in front of her.

“We are going,” Wes says, rolling down the window, “to get my body back.”

Travis doesn’t really know what to say to that. He starts the car and quietly pulls out of the lot.

\---

He can’t help staring, sneaking quick little glances at Wes. It’s weird—this woman is a stranger, but Travis can _see_ Wes inside her, in the way her spine is aligned like it was drawn with a ruler and the irritated way she taps her fingers on the dash. It’s…frankly, it’s more than a little bizarre. He’s gotten used to Wes being…well, _Wes_ , nerdy blonde in a suit, and seeing him in someone else is unsettling.

After ten minutes of following Wes’s directions, Travis musters up the courage to ask, “Why are you…like that? Why aren’t you in your own body?”

Wes slants one heavily-mascaraed eye his way. “Because I wanted a change of pace. What do you think, does it suit me?”

“Um.” Travis doesn’t really know how to answer that. “Are you serious right now?”

“No, I’m not serious. _Jeez_.” The woman’s eyes are hazel, but that eyeroll is pure Wes. “Even if I _were_ looking for a new body, I wouldn’t chose this one. She’s too short and she’s dyed her hair to exhaustion and, being female, her center of gravity is _all_ wrong. It’s like learning to walk all over again.”

“So you’re in her because…?”

“Because she was the closest viable option. Frankly, she seemed grateful to be out of her current predicament.”

Travis almost drives off the road. “You took a _living body?”_ His voice is a little shriller than normal, but that’s to be expected! There are _rules_ about that kind of thing! Braindead and dead bodies are one thing, but to possess a _living_ person—

Wes rolls his—her? no, his, it’s just easier that way—eyes again. “It’s not like I just swooped in and snatched her, Travis. I’m not stupid. I asked, and she said yes, just like I’m supposed to.”

Travis is…not entirely mollified. But he supposes that’s the best he’s gonna get, so he bites his tongue and keeps driving.

Wes’s directions lead him deeper into the California boonies. Travis hasn’t seen another car pass in like fifteen miles.

“Have you ever been in a woman’s body before?” he asks. It’s not something he’s ever thought about before—he doesn’t know why, he _knows_ Wes is an incorporeal smokey demon, it’s not like he’s _always_ been residing in his nerdy accountant body. But with this woman in front of him now, he can’t help but wonder.

Wes hums absently, dark bangs shifting in the breeze coming through the open window. “A few times, at the Crossroads. You just sort of…take who’s closest, when you show up.” He smiles fondly. “There was this one woman who had the most _amazing_ red hair, it was like fire down her back.” He pauses. “Of course, that was medieval Europe, so she had a host of diseases and was missing a few teeth, but still. She had _fantastic_ hair.”

“Huh.” Travis turns onto a dirt road and asks, “Would you take a female body? If you were going to switch?”

Wes shoots him a dark look, eyes flicker-flashing black. “I’m not taking a female body just so you can have a hot lady partner, Travis.”

“Totally not why I was asking!” (Though now that the idea is in his head…) “I just mean…” Travis shrugs, twists the steering wheel—and takes a moment to praise the lord that Wes is so picky about his car, because without the amazing shock absorbers on the Chrysler Travis is pretty sure his spleen would be tangoing out of his abdomen right now. “I mean…aren’t you a guy?”

Wes shoots him another look and says in his _Wow you humans are AWFULLY stupid aren’t you?_ voice, “Travis, I’m a _demon_. I am literally intangible. We don’t _have_ genders. _We have preferences._ ”

“And your preference is…nerdy white accountants?”

Wes rolls his eyes again, looking out the window once more. “Just drive, ok?”

It’s five more minutes before Wes has him stop. Then it’s a ten minute tromp through the trees before they get to a tiny clearing with a suspicious patch of disturbed earth.

Wes lingers at the edge of the clearing and points at the turned dirt. “That’s where they put me.”

Travis takes a step forward, then pauses. “You’re not going to help?”

And Wes smiles, a familiar smile in an unfamiliar face, and lies through his fucking teeth when he says, “I really wish I could, Travis.”

Travis grumbles, strips off his jacket, and gets to work.

At least it’s a shallow grave. It’s still a lot more work than he expected, scooping the dirt away until he gets to the linen-wrapped shroud two feet down. He takes a breath, wipes his forehead, then carefully peels part of the shroud back.

It’s Wes’s face alright, all blonde hair and pale skin and sharp angles, looking as peaceful as if he’s merely sleeping.

“Good,” Wes calls from the edge of the clearing. “Now find whatever stupid trinket is keeping me out and break it!”

The stupid trinket is a silver pendant with a dark green gem in the center, lovingly placed around the corpse’s neck. Travis picks it up, studying the odd design, then holds the chain in his fist and swings the pendant against a tree. The gem shatters, and the woman at the edge of the clearing breathes a sigh of relief, a sigh that goes on longer and longer, trailing black smoke that arrows right for the body in the shallow grave.

Wes’s eyes snap open, and he sits straight up, struggling to get out of the shroud. “I am going to _kill them,”_ he promises vehemently, and linen rips beneath his hands. “I’m going to kill them _dead.”_

Travis, used to his partner’s melodramatics, leaves Wes to it and goes to check on the woman. She’s leaning against a tree trunk, dazed and blinking around the clearing.

“Are you alright?” Travis asks. “Miss…”

“Madeline. Maddy,” the woman says. She nods in answer to his question, then shakes her head, then shrugs helplessly. “I—I don’t know,” she says, letting out a little, baffled laugh. “That was. Really strange.”

“Yeah.” Travis glances over his shoulder, unable to help the fond little smile when he looks at his partner, standing beside the shallow grave, torn strips of linen littering the ground at his feet. He’s scowling down at the dirt on his suit, and god, Travis wouldn’t trade all the pretty female faces in the world for that.

Sincerely, he says, “Thank you,” and he wishes the English language had a better way to convey his gratitude. If she hadn’t said yes, if she hadn’t let Wes inside her, who knows how long it would have taken Wes to find a suitable body and make it back. “Thank you so much.”

Maddy waves a hand, straightening from the tree. “It’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing. Travis has been possessed before—by Wes, in fact—and he knows very much how strange and terrifying it can be, to have your body be in someone else’s control. “Why’d you say yes, anyway?” he blurts before he can stop himself.

He knows why _he’s_ said yes, because it’s _Wes_. But he doesn’t understand why a complete stranger would agree to being possessed by a random demon. It’s still not something he _meant_ to ask—he figures she had her reasons, and it’s really none of his business.

But the question is out there, and Maddy looks at him, smiling faintly with eyes that are way too old for her young face. “Because,” she murmurs, “he asked to use my body. Most people don’t bother.”

And dammit, Travis should have kept his mouth shut, because he doesn’t know how to respond to that. How funny, the people person at a loss for words.

Wes breaks the moment by exclaiming, “Those fuckers ripped my suit!” and then proceeding to declare, loudly, what he’d like to do to the bastards that exorcised him and _ripped his suit_ , like that’s the more grievous crime here.

Travis reaches out, gently cupping Maddy’s elbow. “Come on,” he says, offering her support if she needs it and, if nothing else, a friendly touch. “We’ll give you a ride.”

They eventually pull Wes’s attention away from his damaged suit and head back for the car, and Travis is so very glad to leave that little clearing with the shallow grave behind.

\---

5\. 

\---

Wes is by no means the only demon in LA. There are probably a couple thousand of them—outnumbered only by Las Vegas and New York, probably. Demons that come topside tend to congregate where there are lots of people, or so Wes says, because cities have a much wider variety of people to tempt and seduce and all those other things demons like to do.

So it’s not like Wes is the only demon in the city.

How come, then, it seems like Wes is the only one getting exorcised all the time?

“I mean, let’s be real here,” Travis says, waving one hand. The other hand is currently occupied with a six-inch sub. “That’s kind of like reaching into a barrel of a thousand pennies and pulling out the same one again and again and again.” He leans back, props his feet up on the edge of the morgue drawer. “It’s just not realistic.”

He pauses, because this is where Wes’s snarky, annoyed comment would come in. It doesn’t, of course; Wes’s body is silent and still, eyes closed like he’s merely sleeping. Except Wes doesn’t sleep, and Wes isn’t even _here_ right now—just an empty sack of flesh and blood and bones.

Travis doesn’t let that deter him.

“Okay, _yes_ , I will admit that there aren’t as many demons as publicly _out_ as you are. And they tend to have a lot better bodyguards. But dude, this is like the fourth time this year.”

Wes still doesn’t say anything. Travis takes a bite of his sub.

“We gotta up your self-defense,” he decides. “Yeah. That’s what we need to do.”

_Travis,_ Wes would say, if he could. _I am both immortal AND invulnerable. I don’t NEED self-defense._

“I know you _think_ you don’t need any, but you’re wrong. See, I bet I know exactly what happened. You looked around and saw a bunch of fleshy little people and thought they were harmless. And then the hunters jumped you.”

He points accusingly with a dill pickle. “Don’t even try to argue with me, mister, I know how you think.”

_I am millennia older than you, Travis, you have no idea how I think,_ Wes would say—Travis can even picture the smugly superior derision Wes would put into the words, because as much as Wes seems to enjoy humanity (to a point, of course) he does have this whole ‘I’m totally better than you because I’m a demon’ thing going on.

“Yeah, yeah,” Travis mutters, crunching viciously on his pickle. “Mister Predictable is what you are, buddy.”

“Travis?”

Travis is rather glad there’s no one around to witness his rather high-pitched shriek and the way he jumps a foot in his chair and almost falls right off. His sandwich tumbles off his lap and hits the floor with a splat.

“Aw, man,” Travis pouts, staring sadly at the remains of his sub. “What was that for?”

Jonelle frowns from the doorway, studying the scene. Travis drops his feet to the ground and leans over to pick up the pieces of his sandwich, trying not to think about how she must perceive all this.

“Travis,” Jonelle says, and oh, that’s…surprisingly gentle, for her. Travis doesn’t like it at _all_. He needs her to threaten him like normal and then walk away and act like she never saw him sitting in an empty morgue talking to his partner’s shell of a body.

“Travis,” she says again, “you know I’ll call if anything changes.”

“Yeah, I know.” Travis picks up a piece of lettuce and doesn’t look at her. “I’m good. I was just leaving.”

He was actually pretty settled and prepared to stay another hour or two talking to himself. He doesn’t mention that.

“Travis,” Jonelle says one more time, and Travis snaps, because he is not some fragile little _thing_ here, he can _handle himself_ and he doesn’t need her talking to him like he’s about to _break_.

“It’s _fine_ , Jonelle,” he barks, the paper wrapper from his sub crinkling in his fist. “I was just. Leaving.”

Jonelle gives him a long look, dark eyes too sharp, too knowing. “Okay,” she says softly, with a little nod. “Turn off the lights when you go.”

“Yeah,” he mutters, dropping his gaze, and after a few moments he hears her walking down the hall. As soon as he’s sure she’s gone, he sighs, shoulders slumping, the falsely jovial façade he’d put on earlier slipping away.

“You gotta stop doing this, man,” he tells Wes—or what remains, when everything that makes Wes _Wes_ is gone. “You’re the big, bad immortal demon. You’re not supposed to keep _leaving.”_

And Travis kind of hates how his voice sort of cracks on that last word, but there’s no one around to notice. No one but a bunch of dead bodies, and they’re not going to tell.

Biting his lip, he picks up the rest of his sandwich, busies himself with wiping up smeared mayo and mustard and tosses it all. He wasn’t really hungry in the first place anyway.

And then there’s nothing more to distract him, nothing to keep his hands busy and his mind off of what’s in the middle of the room. 

Exhaling slowly, he stands beside the open drawer, trailing his fingertips across the back of Wes’s hand. The skin is cold and kind of waxy, like touching a mannequin; Wes may not be _living_ in the strictest sense of the word, but he still brings a sort of warmth and vitality to the body he wears. Now, it’s just an empty shell, and he hates it.

“You’re coming back soon, right?” he asks softly, even though he know Wes won’t answer. “I need you to come back soon, okay?”

He’s spent his whole life being left alone. Now, he’s finally found someone who won’t leave him, who _refuses_ to leave him because Wes is a damn stubborn bastard and for _some_ reason he’s chosen Travis as his favorite, but Travis still has to deal with this sort of crap all the time.

He sighs, wrapping his hand around Wes’s and giving it a quick squeeze. “This better not be the one time you don’t come back,” he threatens. “It just…better not be.”

Because Travis has gotten used to Wes’s presence, has grown accustomed to his partner being overprotective and fussy and _always there_. He let Wes get past his defenses, and his usual attitude of ‘They’re all going to leave anyway so fuck ‘em’ doesn’t work anymore.

“You,” he mutters, gently placing Wes’s hand back on the metal surface, “are a bad influence.”

_Why thank you,_ Wes would say, preening smugly, and Travis cracks a little smile at the image.

“See you later, baby,” he says, and carefully closes the drawer.

\---

He can hear Wes through the thick doors of the morgue, and he stops in the hallway, listening. The words aren’t audible, but the tone is, that sharp, slightly nasal cadence Wes gets when he’s complaining. Travis chuckles to himself. Been back five minutes and already he’s found something to grumble about—that is just so _Wes_.

He leans his forehead against the wall, letting the up-and-down music of Wes’s tirade seep into his skin, soaking it up like a dehydrated plant. Just a few days gone, but every time it feels like an eternity without his partner by his side. Simply hearing Wes through the door is enough to make something unbearably tight in his chest relax, make his shoulders relax and his breath come a little easier.

Maybe there’s something to that old cliché about absence making the heart grow fonder, because Travis never appreciates Wes so much as when he’s freshly returned from being exorcised. 

Not that he’d ever let Wes know that. The smug bastard would never let him live it down.

He takes a few deep breaths, composing himself. Calm, cool, collected, like the past few days were a walk in the park. Wes can probably see right through him—he’s good at reading Travis like that—but he’s never called Travis on the lie, so Travis is more than happy to keep it up.

Still, he’s unable to stop the wide grin on his face as he pushes through the double doors into the morgue.

Wes instantly stops haranguing Jonelle about something-or-other and turns to Travis, holding out an imperious hand. “My clothes,” he demands, clipped and short, eyes flicking from blue to black and back again.

Travis rolls his eyes. “Nice to see you too, babe. I’m doing fine, how are you?”

“Travis, I am sitting here naked because _someone_ still refuses to let me keep a spare suit down here. So hand me. My damn. Clothes.”

Travis hands over the bag with Wes’s suit, and Wes immediately hops off the table and starts dressing, because modesty is a silly human trait that has no bearing on existence when you’re made of smoke, blah-di-blah, Travis has heard that one a million times.

Demons may not have a nudity taboo, but Travis really doesn’t need to see Wes’s junk swinging around, so he lets his gaze roam, only half-listening to Wes’s continuing rant. His gaze catches Jonelle’s, who is doing the same thing and avoiding looking at Wes’s corner of the room for the moment.

Jonelle gives him a small, secretive smile, her expression empathetic and gentle, and somehow Travis knows she won’t tell Wes about the whole talking-to-his-body thing. He doesn’t know why—it would be great blackmail ammo, and she’s made no secret of the fact that she’s not his biggest fan. But he appreciates it.

He silently mouths _Thank you_ , acknowledging her kindness, and a glimmer of a moment sparks between them.

“Travis? Are you _ignoring_ me?”

Without missing a beat, Travis beams sunnily at Wes. “Absolutely _not_. I would _never_ let your endless rants go in one ear and out the other, that would be _terribly_ rude of me.”

Wes’s eyes narrow, and he jabs an accusing finger at Travis’s face. “Sarcasm. Not a good look on you.”

“You’re just grumpy ‘cuz you’ve been in Hell for five days. Come on, now,” he coos, gathering Wes’s jacket in one hand and ushering him forward with the other. “We’ll get some food in you and you’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“I’m not a _child_ , Travis, you can’t placate me with _food.”_

“And yet it keeps working. How ‘bout that.” One hand on Wes’s back, he leads Wes out the door, preparing himself for a long-winded rant about everything under the sun. Wes is always in a foul mood when he’s been exorcised, he just needs to get it all out.

He bites back a grin as he follows Wes to the car. Damn, he missed this. After the past few days of silence, even Wes’s monologuing is like music to his ears.

He’s still not telling Wes that, though.

\---

+1. 

\---

It takes a while for the noise to register—a soft, constant rustling of cloth and an almost subvocal muttering. It takes even longer for his foggy brain to understand what that implies.

There’s someone in his apartment. In his _room_.

Travis fumbles for his nightstand and the gun he keeps in the top drawer. Then he gives up and lets his leaden hand fall, dangling over the side of the bed. Let the intruder murder him in his bed, it’d be a welcome relief to how he’s feeling right now.

Murder doesn’t come. The rustling and muttering continue.

With a heavy sigh, Travis forces his eyes open. Somehow, it is completely unsurprising to see Wes in his bedroom, cleaning.

“You are a slob,” Wes says without glancing over, picking up a crumpled tissue by one corner. “The wastebasket is two feet from your bed, you can’t possibly miss it this often unless you’re doing it on purpose.”

“I’ve got the plague,” Travis retorts.

“You do not have the plague, you’d be bleeding from every orifice if you did,” Wes snaps back. He deposits the tissue in the aforementioned wastebasket, disgust marring his otherwise-nice features. 

Travis doesn’t particularly want to get into all the ways he doesn’t have the plague—especially since it certainly _feels_ like he might have the plague—so he completely and unsubtly deflects.

“What are you doing here?”

Wes nudges a dirty sock with his toe, looking like he can’t quite decide between picking it up or just burning the whole apartment down. “You called me. You were lonely. I came.”

Travis sniffles. “Did not.”

Still glaring at the sock, Wes pulls out his phone and presses a couple buttons. After a second, the voicemail starts playing, Travis’s voice coming through loud and congested. The words are sad and needy and utterly pathetic, absolutely nothing he would say if he was in his right mind. Good god, he can’t believe he actually _said_ all that _out loud_.

Heat rises in his face. “Okay, you can shut it off now.”

Wes lets the pitiful message play on a few more seconds, because he’s a bastard like that, then turns it off and slips the phone back in his pocket. “Do you have rubber gloves?” He’s already halfway to the kitchen. “You’d better have rubber gloves, Travis. This place is disgusting!”

Travis snorts indelicately, then grabs a wad of tissues and blows. In deference to his persnickety partner, he at least _tries_ to toss them in the wastebasket. Not his fault he misses. He’s got the plague, no matter what Wes says.

Wes returns, immediately spots the new addition to the mess, and flashes black eyes Travis’s way. Travis, too used to his partner, merely cuddles into his blankets and watches Wes move around the room through half-lidded eyes.

It might seem strange to some to have a demon in their bedroom, cleaning used tissues and dirty socks while wearing a neon yellow pair of rubber gloves. Okay, it even seems a little odd to Travis. But he’s kind of gotten used to it. There’s something comforting about it, knowing that Wes is always going to be at his back, following him and lurking in his shadow because Wes doesn’t really understand the concept of personal space. Be it out on the town or at work or while he’s sick with the plague…

“Wes,” he says slowly, “did you call work and tell them you were coming here?”

Wes glances up. “No. Why?”

Travis sighs. “Give me your phone.”

It takes twenty minutes to convince Captain Sutton that Wes hasn’t gone on a rampage through downtown LA, no sir, he’s right here with me, yessir, I will definitely talk to him about how to use personal time and why he can’t just _not_ show up to work. He disconnects the call feeling more worn-out than he had when he first woke up.

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” he grumbles, dropping Wes’s phone on his nightstand.

“So are you,” Wes growls, dropping a wad of tissues in the wastebasket.

Travis isn’t telling the truth. He’s pretty Wes isn’t either.

\---

The soft scratch of pen on paper wakes him, cutting through the soft, dreamy haze of codeine-enhanced sleep. Two days of this have turned Travis’s sense of alarm way down—he doesn’t even have a moment of panic at someone in his home. 

It’s more than just the fear of an intruder—it’s what it means to have someone moving through his home, rummaging through his things, making themselves comfortable like they _belong_. It makes his chest go tight for reasons he can’t describe, because while Travis may know he has quite a few issues, he’s never really taken the time to give any of those issues an in depth examination. 

And he’s certainly not about to start now, dammit.

Letting out a breath, he rolls over and studies his partner. Wes was deigned to take off his shoes and suit jacket, making this probably the most casual Travis has ever seen him. He’s sitting up against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankles, doing a Sudoku puzzle.

“There’s more Tylenol and orange juice on the nightstand,” Wes says without glancing at him, and Travis would be a little unnerved how Wes can do that except he’s used to it by now.

Travis dutifully sits up enough to take the Tylenol and chug the entire glass of orange juice. He does _not_ want a repeat of the snit Wes had gotten in when Travis only drank half the juice a couple days ago. The guy may be a demon from hell but he has mother-henning down to an _art._

When he lays back down, Wes is still utterly absorbed in his puzzle. Travis knows that’s just a ruse. Wes has a supernatural (pun intended) awareness of his surroundings at all times. He may not always focus on the right things at the right times (which, Travis is pretty sure, is _the entire_ reason Wes keeps getting grabbed by hunters) but he knows what’s going on.

But he is completely unconcerned by Travis’s scrutiny, when anyone else’s gaze would have him bristling defensively. Kind of makes Travis feel all fuzzy inside. He blames that on the lingering remnants of his cold.

“I’m feeling much better, you know,” he says after a while, because Travis has never been too good with silence, doesn’t like where his mind goes when there aren’t words to fill the air. “You could go home.”

“I could, yes,” Wes allows, and doesn’t move one inch except to write in another number. 

Travis waits.

Wes fills in three more numbers in quick succession.

“I can take care of myself,” Travis tries again. “You don’t have to hover around me all the time.”

“Should have thought of that before,” Wes says archly.

“Before what?” Travis has always been curious as to _what_ , exactly, he did or said for Wes to decide he was his favorite human. Wes certainly hasn’t given him any clue. That’s a secret Wes has been determined to keep.

Wes merely hums and spins his pen and most certainly doesn’t answer.

Travis sighs. “I’m never gonna be rid of you, am I?”

“Nope,” Wes declares cheerfully, studying the Sudoku book. There’s a hint of a smirk on his lips, smug and confident and ever-so-slightly patronizing. It’s his _You’re just a small squishy human and I am a much superior demon_ look.

Eyes narrowed, Travis leans up on one elbow and points at a random 6 on the page. “This should be a 3.”

Wes immediately stills, scanning the page every which way he can, trying to find the mistake he’d made. Travis manages an entire thirty seconds before he starts snickering. The demon’s head whips around, eyes flashing black, but Travis is immune to that look now. He collapses on his pillow, wheezing, which, admittedly, has a bit more to do with the remaining congestion in his chest than the laughter.

Wes points his pen at him. “That was uncalled for. Go back to your side of the bed.” When Travis does not immediately comply, Wes reaches over and pushes him, nudging him over the invisible boundary in the middle of the bed.

“You are way too easy, man,” Travis says, tugging his blankets and getting comfortable.

Scowling at his puzzle, Wes snaps, “Stuff if, Travis.”

Biting his lip, Travis rolls over, fighting to keep any more laughter in. Wes wouldn’t appreciate him saying it, but really, sometimes the demon is too easy to tease.

As he settles in, listening to the gentle _skritch-skritch_ of Wes’s pen, Travis’s mind runs over their words, simple syllables running in loops in his head.

_I’m never gonna be rid of you, am I?_

_Nope._

The words seep into his skin, filling some of the hollow places he’s had in his chest for as long as he can remember, and he buries his face in his pillow to hide his smile.

**Author's Note:**

> I think we can all agree that Travis has some pretty hefty issues, abandonment being just one of them. One of the things that quietly kills me about this ‘verse is that Travis, will all his fear of being alone and abandoned, has finally found someone who will never ever leave him because Wes is immortal and extremely possessive. And Travis is so much more okay with that than he’ll ever admit out loud.
> 
> I just have a lot of feels about this series—it continues to be one of my favorite things to write, and I’m so glad you all seem to be enjoying it too. Thank you so much.


End file.
